THE STANFORD UNIVERSITY CLASS OF 1962

This will be the first of a 3-part series on Stanford University.

• Part 1:  the title above.  We have a facebook page.
• Part 2:  The Stanford Prison Experiment and Marshmallow Study.

• 
  Part 3:  Elizabeth Holmes, maybe the most infamous Stanford student.  Currently playing in movie theaters is a documentary about her, You Can See Everything.  Rotten Tomatoes scores of 98/97!!!  I might just go and see it today, which would be the first time for me to actually go to a theater since Barbenheimer weekend.

Why Stanford class of 1962?  That was the year I graduated, after 3.75 years there.  I have had numerous postings about Stanford University.  Here are a few.

• 7February2013:  HOW TO GO TO STANFORD FOR ALMOST FREE
• 15March2014:  STANFORD HITS THE SWEET SPOT
• 9December2015:  THE STORY OF STANFORD WINES
• 15June2016:  CAN STANFORD SAVE PLANET EARTH AND HUMANITY?
• 20January2017:  WHICH IS THE HARDEST UNIVERSITY TO BE ACCEPTED?
• 13November2018:  HOW I NOW THINK I REALLY GOT INTO STANFORD
• 8June2024:  LIFE ON THE STANFORD CAMPUS
• 13March2026:  HOW DID STANFORD GET TO BE SO OUTSTANDING?

I asked Google AI, who are the most famous Stanford University graduates.  Too many to list here, but here are some:  Ted Danson (actor), Sigourney Weaver (actor), Sally Ride (astronaut), Tiger Woods (golfer), Katie Ledecky (swimming), John McEnroe (tennis), Bob Mathias (track and field), Sergey Brin/Larry Page (Google), Phil Knight (Nike), Jensen Huang (NVIDIA), Robert Mondavi (wines), Charles Schwab (finance), Herbert Hoover (POTUS), Sandra Day O'Conner (Supreme Court), Rachel Maddow (broadcaster),  Eunice Kennedy Schriver (special olympics), John Steinbeck (author)  and a bunch of Nobel Prize Winners.

 

I graduated from Stanford University in 1962.  Wow, that was 64 years ago.  I asked Google AI, who were the most famous class of 1962 graduates.  Only two people were mentioned:  Ted Koppel and Phil Knight.  Yes, they are pretty famous, but they each got a masters' degree.  There were no really famous undergraduate students in our class of 1962.  No one, apparently, became a billionaire or U.S. Senator or great golfer or anything.

What spurred me to write this particular posting is an article I read in the recent Fall edition of the alumni magazine.

NERD NATION is a quarter-million strong.

• That’s right. For the first time in history,

  there are more than 250,000 living Stanford

  alumni. There were, in fact, 251,748 in July.

  Our number inevitably dwindles a bit before

  growing at the end of each quarter, but that’s

  the count we’ve used to paint a portrait of the

  alumni body.

• 
  Steve Miller (right) became the 250,000th LIVING alum.  Somebody actually keeps track of these people.
• I found it particularly interesting that the international city where most Stanford graduates lives is Singapore, with 1,251, or 201 alum per million population.
• #2 Tokyo 1082  (29 a/mp) and #3 London 1067 (117 a/mp).
• While 50.2% of those who have read this blog comes from the U.S., an astounding 14.6% come from #2 Singapore, and #3 is the United Kingdom.
• Singapore:  2.35%/million population
• USA: 0.14%/million population.
• UK: 0.06%/million population.

• 
  Some other bits of info.
• 1 in 9,234 became an astronaut.  Sally Ride earned four degrees from Stanford:  BS, BA, MS and PhD), and was the first American woman in space.
• 1 in 19,365 won a Nobel prize.
• 1 in 252,748 became president of the U.S.

• 
  Most popular majors.  Top three.
• 1891-1945:  economics, history and english.
• 1946-1980:  history, economics and political.
• 1981-2000:  economics, biological sciences, and human biology
• 2001-2026:  computer science, human biology and economics.

• 
  Stanford was coeducational when it opened in 1891, although with a cap of 500 females.
• This cap was increased to 40% in 1933, and eliminated in 1973.  Today, 52% are female.
• Harvard was founded in 1636, and only admitted men until their merger with Radcliffe in 1977.  Today, no Radcliffe College, and Harvard has 53% female.

• 
  Stanford University's School of Engineering consistently ranks #2 in the nation behind the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) across major publications like U.S. News & World Report Best Engineering Schools and the QS World University Rankings for Engineering and Technology. [1, 2, 3]
• My major, chemical engineering, only graduates perhaps 11-15/year with a B.S.  
• The department is now rated #3 in the country, but it was last #1 in 2016, a decade ago.
• In Part 3, Elizabeth Holmes' major was in chemical engineering.

Stanford was terrible in athletics when I was there.  Today, doing fine.

• The first university to win the Director's Cup for top NCAA team in all athletic events was North Carolina in 1993-4, with Stanford #2.
• For the next 25 straight years, Stanford was #1.
• Texas broke that streak in 2020-21, and repeated in 2022.  The COVID pandemic changed university priorities.
• But Stanford regained the Cup in 2023.
• Texas prevailed in 2024 and 2025.  Stanford was #2 in 2025/26.

Here is what Stanford students look like on graduation day.  

The Stanford Tree (which has never been blessed by the university as official) is featured.

About this controversy, Stanford once had mascot, an Indian, for in my days there, sport teams were called the Stanford Indians.  However, like the Cleveland  and Washington pro teams, change came.  Early for Stanford, in 1972, as the mascot, said to be Prince Lightfoot of the Yorok tribe, was abolished by the Associated Students of Stanford University.   In 1975, the student body picked Robber Barons as a replacement, in honor of founder, railroad tycoon Leland Stanford.  The school Board did not particularly like that either, for the allusion was all too clear.  Says Google AI:

Leland Stanford perfectly embodied the 19th-century "robber baron" archetype. As a railroad tycoon, governor, and senator, he built a massive fortune through aggressive monopolies, political manipulation, and taxpayer exploitation. Yet, his legacy is deeply paradoxical, culminating in the founding of Stanford University. [1, 2, 3, 4, 5]

The Stanford Tree is a sequoia, and redesigned each year, with a new student inside.  Currently, Sonnet Loki Van Doren.

She comes from a high school class of six.  Here is Van Doren as the current Stanford Tree.

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HOW DO PEOPLE DIE?

You might have heard that mosquitos kill more people than anything else.  Not so.  More than any insect, but not serious enough make the top three.  I asked Google AI about how people most die:

"Old age" indirectly kills the most people annually, as age-related non-communicable diseases (like heart disease, stroke, and cancer) cause over 70% of all global deaths. However, if we strictly evaluate biological pathogens, bacteria are the deadliest category, killing roughly 7.7 million people every year (excluding tuberculosis).[1, 2]

"Old Age" (Age-Related Diseases)	~41–45+ million	Ischemic heart disease (9.5M), Stroke (6.8M), Cancer (10M), Dementia.
Bacteria	~9+ million	Lower respiratory infections (pneumonia), neonatal sepsis, and Tuberculosis (~1.2M).
Viruses	~2–4 million(highly variable)	Seasonal influenza, HIV/AIDS (~830K), Hepatitis, and viral pneumonia. (Fluctuates during pandemics like COVID-19).
Insects	~700,000 to 1 million	Malaria (~670K, transmitted by mosquitoes), Dengue, and Yellow Fever.

From the World Health Organization:

These are the 10 deadliest microorganisms.

I am familiar with research on microorganisms.  My PhD Dissertation was titled, Tunable Laser Irradiation of Escherichia coli.

If you were born in the U.S. in 1940, as I was, my life expectancy should have been 60.8 years.  I'm now 86, so have been lucky, indeed.  

• If born today in Sub-Saharan Africa:  62.5 years.
• Countries.
• #1    Monaco:  86.7 years.
• #2    San Marino:  86.0 years.
• #3    Hong Kong:  85.9 years.
• #4    Japan:  85.2
• #5    South Korea:  84.6
• #62  USA:  79.7
• #70  China:  78.6
• #126  Ukraine:  75.0
• #139  Russia:  73.7
•           WORLD:  73.7
• #201  South Africa:  66.7
• #234  Nigeria:  55.0

From Google AI:

The 10 Oldest Verified People in History

Jeanne Calment (France) — 122 years, 164 days (1875–1997)...right
Kane Tanaka (Japan) — 119 years, 107 days (1903–2022)
Sarah Knauss (United States) — 119 years, 97 days (1880–1999)
Lucile Randon (France) — 118 years, 340 days (1904–2023)
Nabi Tajima (Japan) — 117 years, 260 days (1900–2018)
Violet Brown (Jamaica) — 117 years, 189 days (1900–2017)
María Branyas Morera (Spain) — 117 years, 168 days (1907–2024)
Emma Morano (Italy) — 117 years, 137 days (1899–2017)
Chiyo Miyako (Japan) — 117 years, 81 days (1901–2018)
Delphia Welford (United States) — 117 years, 11 days (1875–1992) (or varying data depending on recent updates in the List of the verified oldest people) [1, 2]

Note that all the above oldest people are female.

Why Women Dominate Longevity Records

Biological factors: Women possess a second X chromosome and benefit from cardiovascular protection provided by estrogen earlier in life. [1]
Lifestyle differences: Men historically have a higher statistical propensity for occupational hazards, high-risk behaviors, and certain health-related habits. [1, 2]
Oldest man comparison: The longest-lived male ever verified in history is Jiroemon Kimura of Japan, who reached 116 years and 54 days—placing him well outside the top ten overall. [1, 2]

Oldest person today is Ethel Caterham of the UK, who turned 117 in August.

About us Homo sapiens:

• So far, going back to around 200,000 BC, around 117 billion of us were born.
• Of that total, amazingly enough, 7% are still alive.  Divide 8.3 billion by 117 billion.

Others:

• 
  Total T. rexes born?  2.5 billion.  Some might have lived as long as 50 years.  And did you know that Tyrannosaurus Rexes had feathers?
• Mosquitos?
• Have been around for more than 200 million years.
• Roughly 110 trillion alive today.
• Perhaps many quintillion have ever lived.

• 
  There are 3500 known species, and only Iceland doesn't have any.  
• At least that is what this reference indicated.  
• Actually, that is not true anymore.  When we were there a couple months ago, we learned that three specimens of the species Culiseta annulata were found just north of Reykjavik in late 2025.  Scientists blamed global warming for this.
• Antarctica is now the only major landmass free of mosquitos.

• 
  And, oh, female mosquitos only bite you, and they pee on you when they suck your blood.
• They can drink up to three times their weight in blood.  However, it would take about 1.2 million of them to drain your body.
• Click to read more about mosquitos.

• 
  Ah chickens.  For human consumption.
• Over a million are killed every hour just in the USA.  Average age?  Six weeks.  
• But 10 million Americans keep chickens as pets.
• There are 168,000 poultry farms in the U.S.
• 75% of laying hens are raised crammed together with 100,000 others.
• We each purchase 279 eggs/year.

• 
  205 million slaughtered in the world daily, or 74 billion/year.  That latter weight would equal 383 Empire State buildings.
• You won't like this, but....Live-Shackle Slaughter: Workers hang live chickens upside down by their legs into metal shackles on a moving conveyor belt. The birds are dragged through an electrified water bath to render them unconscious before an automated blade slits their throats.

• Ethics????

From a welfare perspective, replacing larger animals like cows and pigs with chickens is actually more harmful, since it means a greater number of animals are killed. Despite claims from the meat industry, most chickens live horrific lives and often are killed in painful ways. Reducing chicken intake is also one of the most efficient ways to reduce one’s individual impact on animal lives.  Instead of substituting certain types of meat for each other, many climate-conscious people are choosing to reduce their overall meat intake, sometimes going vegetarian or vegan.

• 
  Jonathan, a Seychelles giant tortoise, was hatched in December of 1832.  He is now 194 years old and lives on the grounds of Plantation House in Saint Helena.  Might weigh up to 350 pounds.  Still alive.
• 
  Wisdom is a Laysan albatross, and is around 75 years old.
• At last check, was still incubating an egg last year.  Has had around 36 chicks.
• Has flown about 120 times around the world.

Nothing to do with the topic of the day, but some good news.

• Bukangi, the 10-foot large gray dusky shark that was trapped in a Busan, South Korea canal, finally was coaxed back to the sea yesterday.
• Her name is that of Busan's North Port.
• She was in plain view of the citizenry and became a celebrity, drawing 1.6 million visitors.
• People were getting worried, for she did not seem to eat at all.
• Plus, it is now getting colder and colder in the port.
• But free she is today.

Watch the successful rescue for her release.  Well, this video was not sure if this third attempt actually worked.  This version shows success.  Oh, this clip blamed global warming for Bukangi's plight.

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